 The movie Fight Club starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt is a cult classic from the 1990s that's based on a novel by Chuck Palinuck. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I only remember bits and pieces. There is one scene that sticks out of my mind though, and that's when the narrator first meets Tyler Durden on the plane. In this scene, Tyler Durden has a monologue in which he explains the illusion of safety that airlines give you with seatbelts and their other safety precautions. In the event of a plane plummeting to the ground, how helpful is that seatbelt really going to be? When we think about it, the world is filled with illusions of safety that are meant to psychologically put us at ease even when they're not doing much to keep us any safer. While there isn't much an airline can do to ensure your safety aside from simply not crashing, this illusion of safety is an issue when it comes to things like police reform. In the wake of the death of George Floyd, which was followed by protests around the world, there's been a lot of discussion about police reform. Recently, John Oliver on Last Week Tonight discussed the somewhat controversial topic of abolishing and defunding the police, but others have just looked for better rules and regulations for our officers. Recently, the Minneapolis Police Department announced that their now banning chokeholds from the repertoire of tactics cops used to subdue a suspect. President Trump even signed an executive order calling for the ban of police chokeholds. The problem with these reforms is that the devil is in the details, and unless we look at what scientific studies have to say about implicit bias and trauma, these reforms are no better than seatbelts on planes. A direct quote from President Donald Trump after signing the executive order was, As part of this new credentialing process, chokeholds will be banned except if an officer's life is at risk. Today, we're going to be focusing on that last exception, which says, except if an officer's life is at risk. This exception isn't a black and white rule, it's purely subjective, and when an officer of the law has the power to end a life based on their inner experience, we need to have a serious talk about what that inner experience looks like. Numerous studies show that black men are perceived as far more dangerous and violent than white men purely based on the color of their skin. When you combine that with the fact that many police officers are on edge, it's a recipe for disaster. Recently, a police officer who has been nicknamed McMuffin Cop is in tears as she shares the story that how her McDonald's breakfast was late and it threw her into a full-blown panic attack. Regardless of whether you believe her panic is justified or not, the reality is that her inner experience is that her life is at risk, and that's a reality that thousands of officers are facing. If we're going to talk about police reform and try to put an end to overt police brutality and the killing of innocent black men, we need to better understand the inner experience of officers so we can start finding solutions that are better than an airplane seatbelt. After the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many other innocent black people, I've been obsessively reading books trying to understand what's going on and what we can do. Thankfully, there are brilliant men and women out there who have dedicated their lives to analyzing this problem and trying to find solutions. Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is a black woman who graduated at the top of her class at Harvard and now she's a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Over years, she's been studying racial biases in the criminal justice system and she's put her findings together beautifully in her new book, Biased, uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think, and do. Once I started reading this book, I couldn't stop. Dr. Eberhardt has conducted numerous studies on biases and this is something that everyone needs to be educated on. Honestly, as I read this book and learned about how black people are perceived and made it difficult for me to even find a logical reason for police officers to be able to carry guns. Now, you're probably thinking, police officers need guns. They encounter dangerous people and life-threatening situations on a regular basis. While it's true that police officers do sign up to put their lives at risk, we're actually living in the least dangerous time in history. And we also need to understand that when you believe danger is lurking around every corner, you become a hammer and everything starts looking like a nail. And in this case, people of color are that nail. Going back to the police reform exception that allows lethal force if a cop feels his or her life is in danger, we must look at Dr. Eberhardt's findings when it comes to the bias of black people. In 2014, a black man named Eric Garner was killed by police via a chokehold and much like George Floyd, he begged for his life while saying he couldn't breathe. The police officers involved in the death of Eric Garner kept referring to how big he was in their statements. So they tried to justify their excessive force by pointing to Eric Garner's size. Although Eric Garner was a bigger man, multiple officers were involved in his death and Garner was unarmed. So what made Eric Garner's body so dangerous? Well, part of that danger is the perception that black men are bigger than they actually are. In her book, Dr. Eberhardt points to a 2017 study which states the following. Black men tend to be stereotyped as threatening and as a result may be disproportionately targeted by police even when unarmed. Here, we find evidence that biased perceptions of young black men's physical size may play a role in this process. The result of seven studies showed that people have bias to perceiving young black men as bigger, taller, heavier, more muscular and physically more threatening, stronger, more capable of harm than young white men. Aside from being perceived as taller, heavier and more muscular, black men are also perceived as being more violent. In a 2011 study, participants were shown one of two videos. In both videos, a black man and white man are having a discussion, which escalates into an argument. For one group, the video shows the white man shoving the black man. In the other, the video shows the black man shoving the white man. The authors of the study stated this. While subjects observing a videotape of purported, ongoing interaction occurring in another room, labeled an act ambiguous shove as more violent when it was performed by a black man than when the same act was perpetrated by a white. That is the concept of violence was more accessible when viewing a black than viewing a white committing the same act. Other studies show that black men are also more likely to be presumed to have a dangerous weapon on them. In the 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, this young black man was shot 41 times after reaching for his wallet because one of the officers yelled gun. More recently in 2014, 12 year old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police officers for carrying a toy gun. According to the science, this is far less likely to happen to white people. In a University of North Carolina study titled Weapon Bias, split second decisions and unintended stereotyping, participants were primed by being shown either a picture of a white man or a black man. Then there was shown an extremely fuzzy picture that slowly came into focus. Sometimes the picture would be of a harmless item like a cell phone and other times it would be something more dangerous like a gun. This graph shows the probability of error they found between white and black faces and what they were holding. As you can see, there was a much larger margin of error when it came to believing the black person was holding a gun. This means that people wait longer to see if a white person is really holding a weapon than they do a black person. Now, I'm hoping you're starting to see the problem with the illusion of safety when it comes to police reform. When there's an exception that police officers can use deadly force if their life is in danger, we must take a look at these studies to take them into account. When police officers encounter black people and instinctually believe that the black person is bigger, more violent and more likely to have a deadly weapon, officers are far more likely to feel like their life is being threatened. Finally, we need to talk about mental illness within police departments because if implicit bias is a fire that's kindling at all times, PTSD is the fuel that can make it explode. Recently, my girlfriend talked me into checking out the show Sons of Anarchy, and we've been binging it over the last few weeks. In season six, the show introduced a character by the name of Lee Torek. He's a retired U.S. martial, but we soon find out that he's got a lot of psychological issues and clearly suffers from PTSD. In one episode, he just finished sleeping with an escort and when someone pulled up to the hotel, you can see Torek's trauma response get triggered. In this triggered state, Torek is holding his gun so when the escort harmlessly says something from behind him, he gets startled and shoots her. My girlfriend and I watched this episode right around the time McMuffin Cop was trending and I couldn't help but see the relation. When Torek was triggered, his fight-or-flight response kicked in, which resulted in him shooting and killing an innocent woman. In a different episode, Gemma's trauma causes her to accidentally elbow Terra in the face. Although this show is fiction, trauma responses and anxiety are real. One of the common comments we saw about McMuffin Cop was that this is someone who should not have a gun if she's in this mental state. Obviously, I can't diagnose her, but I'd assume that she might be struggling with vicarious trauma with all of the news of protests and riots. Even when civil unrest isn't happening, PTSD is a major issue among police officers. According to Dr. John Villante from the University of Buffalo, many police officers need to work on their mental health because it could lead to fatal mistakes. In one article, Villante says the following. Post-traumatic stress disorder may occur when a person is exposed to traumatic events. Person so exposed may experience symptoms such as distressing memories of the event, avoidance of any reminders of the event, and psychological emotional difficulties. Police officers are often exposed to traumatic events such as seeing abused children or dead bodies, severe assaults and involvement in shootings, and are therefore at risk for PTSD. Such exposure can impair the mental well-being of police officers and affect their ability to perform duties to the public. The potential long-term effects of PTSD in police officers may additionally lead to behavioral dysfunction such as substance abuse, aggression, and suicide. It is estimated that on average approximately 15% of officers in the United States experience PTSD symptoms. Unfortunately, it is not definitively known what the true scope of this problem is among police. With thousands of police officers suffering from PTSD while also having implicit biases, police reform is yet another illusion of safety and we need some real solutions. If I'm being absolutely honest, I had to take a break from reading these books about bias because it's so heartbreaking. As I continue to learn more about this subject, I discover how many biases we all have. I think the saddest part about the research is that black people aren't immune to these biases. In just about every study I reference, these biases weren't strictly found in white people. Black people also perceive other black people as potentially more dangerous. In fact, Dr. Eberhardt has a story in her book about being arrested by a black police officer based on bias. What we come to find out is that the systemic issues we face as well as the portrayal of black people in the news and media is playing a role in our biases. Although we have a difficult long road ahead of us, hope is not lost. Even though I had to take a mental break from learning about this subject, Dr. Eberhardt and many others have given me hope through their studies because they also have solutions. If you've made it this far through this video, you've already taken the first step, which is self-awareness. Studies show that when people are educated about their biases, they're much more likely to pay attention to them. When they react to situations, they have a better ability to pause and ask themselves if bias is playing any role in their thoughts or behaviors. In his book, Mindfulness for Fidgety Skeptics, author Dan Harris discusses how mindfulness training has been extremely helpful for police officers when it comes to decreasing violence. Mindfulness is scientifically proven to improve emotional regulation and our natural ability to pause and make better decisions. Now, what about PTSD? Well, the good news is that mindfulness-based stress reduction, also known as MBSR, has also been proven to be very helpful for people to overcome PTSD. It's time the police departments start taking the mental health of police officers way more seriously. Police officers are in a high stress environment and sometimes witness horrors that we can't even imagine. This is why therapists and psychologists need to be an integral part of each police department. And police officers need to be able to take paid leaves of absence after going through a traumatizing experience. But it's not just a personnel issue, it's also a culture issue. Police officers are trained to believe that talking about feelings and emotions is a sign of weakness. Many officers don't get help for their mental health because they fear how they'll be judged. To get where we need to be, officers need to support one another getting help for their mental health when people see that the mental health is deteriorating. Until we're able to address the implicit biases and mental illness of our police officers, President Trump's executive orders and other forms of police reform aren't going to work. As long as we base policies off of the subjective experience of officers who suffer from biases and trauma, Black men and women will continue to die. So, we need to get rid of the illusion of safety of police reform and start implementing scientifically proven solutions. Alright everybody, thank you again so much for watching this entire video. Like I said in this video, I think it's extremely important to educate ourselves about these subjects. Like, we can't fix things if we don't even know where the problem is. And I know something that helps me with my mental health and just addressing all these issues as a whole is learning about these and being able to pause and think and say, oh okay, here's maybe why I'm reacting this way or here's maybe why this is happening. And then we start to understand the things that are happening in the world and then we can start going towards better solutions. Alright, and in this video we did talk a bit about trauma. So, if you're somebody who is struggling with trauma, make sure that you get some help. I always recommend seeing a therapist. If you have health insurance, talk to your doctor, talk to your insurance company, see if there's a therapist within your network. Personally, I use BetterHelp online therapy and I have an affiliate link for BetterHelp online therapy. So, if you want affordable online therapy, check out the description and the pinned comment down below. And basically what that means is you get affordable online therapy and a little bit comes back supports the channel and all the work that I put into these videos that usually get demonetized. Alright, anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. As well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at therewiretole.com and the Rewiretole merch from the merch store. You're all awesome. Alright, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.